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History
In 1909, the Philadelphia Housing Commission, the
grandparent of the present Housing Association of Delaware Valley, was formed
to develop wholesome surroundings and proper home conditions throughout the
City. It was the first citizen’s housing advocacy group in the country.
From the start, the Housing Commission had severe
housing problems to deal with. In 1909, nearly one million people were
crammed into Philadelphia’s narrow row houses, and the only protection they
had against poor living conditions was a health code that had been written in
1818 when the City’s population was 110,000.
So the first thing the Housing
Commission did was to draw up a comprehensive housing code. However, fighting
among realtors, landlords, speculators, and legislators went on for almost
three years, but in 1915, code enforcement went into effect. Unfortunately,
there were no City inspectors to enforce the code. So the Commission hired
its own engineers and sanitation inspectors, and between the years 1909 and
1925 the Commission filed 95,000 complaints.
In 1916, the Commission realized
the long-term need for a citizen’s housing agency, and incorporated and
changed its name to the Philadelphia Housing Association.
In the late 1920s, the Association
broadened its field work by conducting house to house vacancy reports (in one
year it covered 1,733 City blocks amassing information on 63,000 dwellings).
By the time the war came, changes
were happening fast at the Association. For instance, during the 1940s the
Association conducted only 3,000 inspections and by the war’s end, the
Association had gotten out of the business altogether of making door-to-door
inspections. It then turned to the task of housing advocacy through
education.
In 1969, the Association merged
with the Fair Housing Council of Delaware Valley, and became the Housing
Association of Delaware Valley. The Association then began to use public
information, technical assistance, research and watchdogging to expand
housing opportunities and to fight to end racism and exploitation in housing.
By the early 1970s, the
Association issued its report on state subsidization of exclusionary suburban
communities, which inspired the State Department of Community Affairs to
withhold monies from a suburban community it deemed exclusionary.
The Association also researched
the problem of housing abandonment in the City, then offered an urban
homesteading plan to solve that problem. It looked at housing problems in the
Spanish-speaking community, then began working with tenants in that
community. It became a clearinghouse for information on housing with the
inauguration of its housing magazine, INFILL, the Community Alerting
Service and the Legislative Report.
In the mid-70s, the Association
was active in anti-redlining measures, and worked for adoption of the
Philadelphia Mortgage Plan. The Association then organized a citizen’s group,
the Philadelphia Coalition Against Redlining, and published a comprehensive
report on redlining patterns in four Philadelphia neighborhoods.
Throughout the latter half of the
70s, the Association’s major concern was the displacement of low-income
residents from their neighborhoods. HADV’s efforts in combatting the
recycling of inner-city neighborhoods was aimed at the use of public monies
to expedite this process.
Another major activity of the
Housing Association during the second half of the 70s was the issue of why
120 Turnkey III housing units should not be build in the Whitman Urban
Renewal Area. The Association filed an amicus brief in support of the
Resident Advisory Board’s lawsuit which successfully proved that the City of
Philadelphia violated the United States Constitution as well as the 1964 and
1968 Civil Rights Acts by refusing to build the 120 Townhouses in Whitman.
The United States Supreme Court on several appeals upheld the decision that
the houses must be built. Finally, in 1982 the Whitman Townhouses were built
and occupied.
In 1979, the Association along
with representatives from several areas of housing related disciplines,
developed a model partial rehabilitation program which utilized ásweat
equityε as an answer to the housing abandonment problem and as a means
of providing affordable housing for those families who were previously priced
out of the homeownership market. The Association joined with several other
groups to seek legislative relief for discriminatory acts based on marital
status, source of income and the presence of children.
In the early 1980s, the
Association focused its efforts on combating the growing spector of inner
city neighborhood recycling/displacement and worked to stop the harassment of
minority families who were attempting to move into non-minority areas.
In order to prevent the
displacement of Spanish-speaking persons from the Spring Garden area of
Philadelphia, the Association opened the Housing Association Information
Program in 1980. The Housing Association Information Program provides
counseling to low-income persons who want to purchase a home; are facing
default or delinquency problems with their mortgages; are having
landlord/tenant problems; or want information about the various housing
programs which the City of Philadelphia administers. At the same time, the
Association introduced a new public education forum, Housing Spotlight,
to bring the membership face to face with influential government officials.
As Philadelphia’s housing crisis
grew more complex in the 1980s, the Association researched and published
numerous studies on issues such as Philadelphia’s rental market, tenant
rights, public housing, funding for housing and community development,
suburban housing programs, housing rehab costs, home equity conversion,
housing opportunities for the disabled, community organizing, and
Philadelphia’s Housing Court.
By the mid-80s, the Association
launched two new housing alternatives including the development of a sweat
equity housing demonstration program and a tenant management demonstration
program.
In the early 90s, the Housing
Association Reinvestment Corporation (HARC), a subsidiary of HADV, completed
a sweat-equity homeownership project consisting of seventeen single-family
homes in the Strawberry Mansion/Allegheny West neighborhood of North Philadelphia. HARC was founded in the late 80s to
develop affordable housing for low and moderate-income homeowners and
renters. Seventeen low-income
families have become homeowners through the HARC program, and another ten
homes are scheduled for completion in November 1999.
Public housing was strong on the
agenda of HADV in the 1990s. Most of
the agency’s resources have been directed at helping public housing residents
have a stronger, more effective voice in the management of their developments.
The Association currently provides leadership training to establish a
foundation for advanced concepts like resident management and home ownership.
Various forms of technical assistance are conducted to help tenant councils
operate more efficiently in meeting residents’ needs and to interact
constructively with Housing Authority personnel. To meet the growing need for
training and technical assistance, the Association established a Training
Institute, and in-house program that initiates, plans, and implements
training and technical assistance activities. Most of the assistance is provided to public housing tenant
councils in Philadelphia and in the City of Chester, although the Housing
Association has provided assistance to the Chicago Housing Authority and the
Pittsburgh Housing Authority.
The Housing Association revisited
its roots as an advocacy agency in 1996 by hiring two staff researchers and
writers. The housing advocates are
responsible for communicating the needs of the low-income and minority
community to representatives in the local, state and national political
bodies, and educating the public about legislative developments and judicial
decisions that affect the housing opportunities that are available to them. The housing advocates have re-established
quarterly publication of INFILL Magazine as the preeminent journal of housing
and community development in the Delaware Valley, and FAIR HOUSING ALERTING BULLETIN, a monthly newsletter reporting
fair housing legislative and judicial news.
The housing advocates are also responsible for public information and
education through the publication of Letters to the Editor of the local
newspapers, and through Press Releases announcing the publication of HADV
housing studies.
Ninety years since its founding,
the Housing Association is still working to develop wholesome surroundings
and proper home conditions but its advocacy has broadened to include
citizen’s of the entire Delaware Valley and watchdogging of the whole range
of established institutions, public and private, that influence and shape
housing policy.
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